Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully...
...which angels desire to look into.~ 1 Pet 1:10-12

Friday, January 4, 2008

The Kind of Christianity That Will Win Muslims!

Christianity Today is running an article about Christianity in Turkey. I found the following VERY interesting!

Engaging Islamic SocietyIn 1986, Ucal finally started a church. His tiny congregation was allowed to worship for 60 minutes every 15 days inside the Swedish Consulate in Istanbul.

But Turkish newspapers immediately made a big deal out of a Muslim-background pastor starting a Christian church for Muslim-background Turks. His parents hadn't become used to Ucal being a Christian and had no idea he was going to start a church. They were startled when they opened their morning newspaper. "Those years were terrible," Ucal recalls. His parents were frightened for their son. Campus Crusade staff members who were helping Ucal warned, "Turgay, you will die." Yet they stayed with him. Within a year, Ucal had 20 Muslim-background Turks in his church, and stability was emerging.

Ucal's congregation moved toward a charismatic, Vineyard-style form of Christianity. Meanwhile, Ucal served in the army for eight months and received training in ministry in the Philippines and South Korea. After that, Ucal decided to plant a different kind of church based on systematic theological teaching. While in South Korea, he had noticed the parallels between systematic theology and the disciplined Islamic lifestyle and mindset. He wondered if other Muslim-background Turks might respond to a more structured approach than the informal evangelicalism of which he was a part. Ucal found that his Muslim neighbors are attracted to systematic approaches to religious instruction, and are also easily touched emotionally. So Ucal began approaching them with an "emotional Calvinism."